Happiest Place On Earth Adjacent

I went to Disneyland for the first time in my life on Sunday, and I suspect it won’t be the last time, given Mikey’s reaction. It wasn’t a trip we had planned far in advance. Growing up in Ohio near Kings Island with grandparents in Orlando near Disneyworld, my lack of amusement at amusement parks was based on experience. On Saturday, however, we were at a park in West Hollywood and met up with my friend and former head huntress Susan and her son Lanyon who is Mikey’s age, and she launched into a pitch on Disneyland. All my concerns about cost, age appropriateness, and lack of alcohol were addressed and dismissed, and once Ian had turned, I crumbled. So Sunday morning, we left at 7:15 and breezed down to Orange County 45 minutes later when the park opened.

I was in the front seat looking for a parking space, and Ian was in the back with Mikey. I heard simultaneously Ian say, “Oh … dear,” and Mikey burst into tears.
Mikey, it seemed, had greeted Disneyland by vomiting down his shirt.

He was fine, so we changed into his (only!) spare and met Susan, Lee, and Lanyon at Jamba Juice where Mikey had a smoothie to make up for the lack of food in his belly -- and it went all down his spare shirt. This is before we made it through the ticket gates.

So Mikey wore Lanyon's spare shirt, and we went into the park. Lanyon was content at sitting in his stroller, grinning, and saying, "Disneyland! Disneyland!" while Mikey had to be out of his stroller, racing around in the crowd, saying, "Wow!" We saw our first cartoon character, Buzz Lightyear, the hero of Toy Story 1, 2, & 3, and Lanyon said, "Buzz!" and Mikey said, "Ahhhhhhh!" and ran into my arms. Not a big fan of people with masks over their faces, and no idea who Buzz Lightyear was.

We educated him by taking him on his first ride, which is a Buzz Lightyear ride where you fire lasers at the evil Emperor Zurg while spinning in your cart. You can actually control the spin with a lever, so Mikey saw to it that we were constantly spinning. The whole time, shrieking with joy. We also picked up a Toy Story 3 tee-shirt, so Mikey would have a commemorative article, and Lanyon could have his spare shirt back.

That was the theme for the whole day. He has a blast. He high-fived Sully, the giant blue monster from Monsters Inc., he sat through fully 3/4 of a Disney show which felt like 4/3rds of one as Handy Manny droned on, he went on the merry-go-round five times and six or seven other rides, he ate and ate and ate. Many highlights, but when he and Lanyon held hands and ran around giggling, it was not only one of our favorite parts, from the Oohs and Aws of the crowd, it was the favorite part for many strangers. We're going to sell this video of them to Disney, or we should.


He fell asleep in his stroller at 2 pm, and we drove back. And then we learned at home how to wash vomit out of a car seat! Talk about a happy ending!

Actually, the happy ending or happy beginning occurred last night when Mikey’s lawyer notified us that she had received official confirmation that we will be at the courthouse adopting Mikey on the 19th at 1:30 pm. We will be the first on the docket for National Adoption Day. Hooray!